So has North Korea's Kim Jong Un got game?

In August 1998, a shy North Korean teenager arrived at a Swiss state school with a fake name "Pak Un", a collection of genuine, top-of-the-line Nike sneakers and a passion for American basketball.

"We only dreamed about having such shoes. He was wearing them," recalled Nikola Kovacevic, a former schoolmate of the curiously well-heeled North Korean. Each pair, estimates Kovacevic, cost more than $200 -- at least four times the average monthly salary in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, where at least 1 million people had died as a result of food shortages in the mid- and late 1990s.

The North Korean fell in with a group of mostly immigrant kids who shared his love of the National Basketball Association. Kovacevic, who shot hoops with him most days, said Pak Un was a fiercely competitive player. "He was very explosive. He could make things happen. He was the playmaker," said Kovacevic, who now works as a tech specialist in the Swiss army. "If I wasn't sure I could make a shot, I always knew he could."

Marco Imhof, another Swiss basketball buddy, said the Korean was tough and fast, good at both shooting and dribbling. "He hated to lose. Winning was very important," recalled Imhof.

At his spacious Swiss apartment, said one friend who visited, the Korean had a room filled with American basketball paraphernalia. He proudly showed off photographs of himself standing with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers. (It is unclear where the pictures were taken. On at least one occasion, a car from the North Korean Embassy drove "Pak Un" to Paris to watch an NBA exhibition game.)

That North Korean teen, Kim Jong Un, now stands to take over North Korea from his ailing father, Kim Jong Il. Among the questions looming is if he's got game.

19 % North Korean defectors want to go to US

Nearly one-fifth of North Korean defectors aspire to move to the United States, despite relentless anti-US propaganda in North Korea. A survey also found 64 per cent of defectors hoped to move to South Korea.

Economist Marcus Noland and associates surveyed more than 1,300 North Koreans in China and 300 others in South Korea in hopes of learning more about their lives in the hardline communist state and their reasons for leaving.

Only one per cent wanted to return to North Korea, with another one per cent aspiring to other destinations. Mr Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the United States attracted younger, better educated North Koreans.

He said the findings showed that foreign media such as US government-backed Radio Free Asia were gradually penetrating North Korea, though most North Koreans decided to flee due to word of mouth as they desperately seek a way out of extreme poverty and malnutrition.

'What is remarkable when you talk about these people is the almost entire lack of knowledge about the outside world on which they made this fundamental decision to leave the country,' Mr Noland said.

AFP

North Korea facing worst crisis since 1994

North Korea faces its worst crisis in more than a decade due to the protracted conflict with the international community over its nuclear ambitions, according to Yonhap News citing a report by the Korea Development Institute, a South Korean state-run think tank.

The prediction is North Korea’s economy will decline in the second half of this year if Pyongyang fails to resolve the nuclear issue. And it will not have enough food to feed its people.Despite reports of a good harvest in the North last year thanks to favorable weather conditions, the KDI implies that a food shortage would still impact many North Koreans "depending on their social status and where they live."

The report comes amid growing tension on the Korean Peninsula following the North's second nuclear test in May, which drew condemnations and fresh sanctions from the U.N. Security Council. The KDI cited the sanctions and strained inter-Korean relations as reasons for its bleak outlook for the North Korean economy in the second half. Uncertainties surrounding leader Kim Jong-il's health were also mentioned, amid rumors he has developed pancreatic cancer.

"With all of these factors combined, the current difficulties confronting North Korea can be compared to conditions back in 1994, when Kim Il-sung died and a nuclear crisis was sparked" the KDI said in the report, which assesses trends in the communist country. "It will be much more difficult to reach a breakthrough (than it was in 1994)," it added.

[The Korean Herald]

Background on North Korean heir apparent Kim Jong Un

In August 1998, as famine reached a terrible climax in North Korea, the destitute Asian nation enrolled a shy teenager, Kim Jong Un, in a Swiss state school. A rare insight into this sealed world is offered by Swiss recollections of the young North Korean who, from 1998 until late 2000, lived in Liebefeld at No. 10 Kirchstrasse, a sedate suburban street.

Known as "Pak Un" to his teachers at Liebefeld-Steinhölzli Schule, a German-speaking state school, he was registered with Swiss authorities as the son of an employee at North Korea's embassy in the nearby city of Bern. (Pak is a very common Korean surname akin to Smith.)

During his first few months in Liebefeld, Pak Un attended a remedial language course for foreign students with poor German. A swift learner, he soon switched to a regular class, said an education official, who described the boy as "well-integrated, diligent and ambitious." Friends recalled that Pak Un spoke fluent, if sometimes ungrammatical, German but struggled with the Swiss dialect. He also knew English.

[While it was widely reported that he had attended the International School of Berne, a private, English-speaking establishment near the North Korean Embassy in the Swiss capital, North Korea watchers say, that student -- who went by the name "Pak Chol" -- was most likely Kim Jong Un's older brother, Kim Jong Chol.]

Kim Jong Un has not been seen in public since his apparent time in Switzerland. Neither his name nor his photograph has ever appeared in North Korean media. After leaving Europe, he is reported to have attended Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Military University, an officer training school, but virtually nothing else is known about him.

The Swiss education of North Korea's apparent future leader raises a tantalizing question: Did it open his horizons beyond the narrow, xenophobic worldview of his homeland, where schools bombard pupils with the evils of "U.S. imperialism" and instill unquestioning obedience to a highly centralized state headed by a leader-for-life? This is in stark contrast to Switzerland, a democratic federal state in which power is widely diffused, where all laws can be challenged by citizens through referendum, and where the presidency is a rotating position that changes every year.

Market Growth, North Korea style

The North Korean government appears confused how to handle capitalism within its borders. The government nominally embraced the legality of markets in 2002, but in recent years has been clamping down again. Late last year, the central government notified local officials that all private markets could operate only three days a month in 2009 - yet the new restriction was never adopted.

North Korean observers such as Curtis Melvin, founder of the site "North Korean Economy Watch" have watched the growth of village markets via satellite photos courtesy of Google Earth. "In large towns you can see multiple markets, but you can find them in every town and every city," Melvin said.

The growth of these markets -- long on the fringe of legality in North Korea -- caused government leaders to begin clamping down on the practice as a threat to the regime. According to North Korea watchers, border police began clamping down on widespread smuggling last year.

The markets began sprouting in the wake of the famines of the 1990s as North Koreans struggled for additional food and income. The public distribution system of food and supplies collapsed as aid from the Soviet Union dried up and "grassroots capitalism was born," says Andrei Lankov, a professor of North Korean history at Kookmin University in Seoul.

Some economists estimate North Koreans earn more than 50 percent of their income by illegal trade. It's even the subject of dark humor within the country, said Lankov, quoting a self-deprecating joke North Koreans make: "There are only two kinds of people in North Korea: those who are engaged in trade and those who are dying."

There is a belief that regional governors are making so much money from operations in their districts they are allowing them to grow unchallenged, Melvin said. "It's not clear where all this is going," he added.

[CNN]